Backpacking the High Sierra Trail

How to tell this story?

I’ll try a technique that calls for me to begin, well at the beginning. We had a tremendous plan to hike across the Sierra crest, the singularly highest range of mountains in the continental United States. We were to go off trail and climb some high peaks, cross some rarely crossed passes and generally see some of the more remote and beautiful areas of the Sierra for 9-10 days. There were three of us; Daniel Gant, Jared Meichtry and Josh Grant and we’d been planning/preparing for this trip for about 6 months or so.

For those with just a basic understanding of California’s geography, here is an overview of where we were and what we did. The black line on the map is the general path we took while hiking, generally following the High Sierra Trail. The red line is the route we had to drive, about 8 hours of driving were required to setup the vehicles before the trip. Jared and I had to drive up to the Whitney portal on the Eastern side of the Sierra and leave my truck there, then take his truck all the way over to Lodgepole on the Western side of the Sierra.

Just getting that setup involved me getting two tickets and an accident. Here’s how it all began.

I left my house and traveled south to the freeway interchange that would get me to the portal to drop my truck off. No more than 2 miles from home, some clown pulls out of a blind dirt pullout without looking. I’m so shocked to see anyone pulling out of one of these unused pullouts I waste time thinking about it instead of reacting. I plow into my brake pedal, remembering that my ABS is out so the truck goes into a hard skid. Thankfully before my foot got to the brake my hands reacted by turning away from the offending car. So now I’m skidding straight toward a tree and I feel the car in question hit my right side, he still didn’t brake.

Here’s the after picture. That’s my truck, that’s the tree. No real damage, just some scratches to the paint, but the Big Red Truck has kept me safe again, though since the 4 wheel drive is also out, I had to get towed out of the deep sand I was in. That was my first accident ever, and I’m a bit shaken by it. Well, no problem, get all the badluck out of the way before the trip…

So, I made it to the freeway safely after that, though within a couple of miles of being on the freeway I’m pulled over. Bleh, band of brothers yadda yadda yadda and I get away with a fixit ticket. Still though, within an hour of leaving my house I had an accident and the first of two tickets. Not long after this, I did get the second ticket, yaddayaddayadda fixit ticket again. Well great, my first tickets in years and my first accident ever. What else could go wrong after this kind of auspicious start?

After all this crap, we made it up to the Whitney portal and left my truck on the side of the road. On the way out of there, Jared picked up a hitchiker who had just completed the same general route that we were about to attempt. He said that two of his hiking partners bailed on him on the second day and turned around to go home. The route had been harder than they thought it would be and they weren’t prepared for it. He stank worse than you can imagine, but he had some good information, so it was marginally worth it.

What a stupid prologue.